Are We About To See A.I. Generated Movie Posters?
Each New Year we read big predictions for the twelve months that lie ahead. Here are some of the most frequent examples for 2023:
"Work culture will continue its trend to flexibility."
"Tensions will grow between citizens and their governments."
"Energy will stay expensive."
"Artificial Intelligence will crop up EVERYWHERE."
Many, many moons ago, I studied Artificial Intelligence and even wrote commercially exploited Neural Networks (think small human brains). But the most they could do was convert hand-written scrawls to computer editable text.
In the decades since then, predictions about major A.I. breakthroughs have been made most years. Yes, computers can now beat grandmasters at chess. They can (nearly) drive cars. Last year a Google engineer even controversially claimed that a Google chatbot (LaMDA) had attained sentience, expressing the capacity for feeling and emotion. (Most scientists don't agree with him.)
So, in the early days of 2023, I decided to see what else A.I. was now capable of. Guess what? It can produce images, just from a text description.
Here is a simple example from an A.I. engine known as Stable Diffusion 2.1. We asked it to generate 'a cat in a hat'. Here is the result.
Not bad eh?!
So, with a bit of scepticism and a massive dose of mischievousness, we set off to generate some A.I. movie posters. Here are the images, all GENUINELY produced by an A.I. engine and with some very surprising results!
A.I. Generated Movie Posters
We started with a topic that would have lots of relevant background material.
Input: "A movie poster for the next Disney Princess film."
Here is what the A.I. came up with...
Perhaps generic, but quite impressive. Let's try a director with a very identifiable aesthetic...
Input: "A movie poster for the next Wes Anderson film."
It looks like the director is starring in his own film. With a cow.
What can it do for a distinctive film genre?
Input: "A movie poster for the best horror film of all time."
Not bad. It does look pretty horrific! What if we remade a poster for a popular film?
Input: "A new movie poster for Pulp Fiction."
Or if we take a franchise and look forward (excitedly) to the next movie...
Input: "A movie poster for the next Indiana Jones film."
Not quite Drew Struzan'esque, but still a recognisable depiction of Harrison Ford
Perhaps we should look for the next 007?
Input: "Nicholas Cage as James Bond"
The angst he would bring to the role is almost palpable.
What about if we remade a sci-fi in a new genre?
Input: "Star Wars as a Spaghetti Western"
It came up with a few for this that made me smile!
What does it know about a movie poster designer with a unique style?
Input: "A new movie poster for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey in the style of Saul Bass"
The results were certainly minimalist...
Impressed by the results of that one, we thought we would try a really easy one to finish with...
Input: "Jaws but with the shark replaced by a cat."
Oh well.
There are some really interesting results there - and they are all genuinely created by the A.I. with just our input text as instruction.
I was quite surprised by how far the technology has moved on, but fun as it was, I think Paul Shipper, Akiko Stehrenberger, Steve Chorney and Rory Kurtz's jobs are safe for a good while yet!
What do you think? (Both humans and A.I. chat bots may respond...)
Adam and the Art of the Movies team.
P.S. The banner at the top of this blog post was also generated by the A.I. The input? "Are we about to see A.I. generated movie posters?"!
AI producing film posters?
Aesthetics? Nope.
Image quality (resolution at poster size)? Nope.
A long long way to go